


makoharurinweek 2015 DAY 5 - Finding you Again (prompt: sorrow and ocean)

by yakutatazuaho



Category: Free!
Genre: Friendship, M/M, Ocean, Other, Parting, Sad, Young, makoharurinweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 07:38:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3520910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yakutatazuaho/pseuds/yakutatazuaho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haru, Makoto and Rin live in a village that forbids the children to go near the ocean. The three break the rule and get to see it for the first time, where an unexpected ocurance happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	makoharurinweek 2015 DAY 5 - Finding you Again (prompt: sorrow and ocean)

As there are many folk tales and legends, there was this one story; it was the story of three close friends from a small village, just a small part of all the world's happenings. A grain of salt in the infinite ocean, but it is certainly a fragment of the world's life.

"Hey, Haru, take a look at that!" said a young boy with red hair flowing in the wind, turning around and tiptoeing left and right around a boy with dark hair, flashing a happy and genuine smile.

"Makoto, you're too slow!" he added, looking behind the boy called Haru to see a slightly taller figure walking slowly toward the other two with a gentle expression and a constant smile on his face. 

"I'm right behind you, Rin." the taller boy with brown hair answered as he didn't make any efforts to change his pace, still following the two closely.

Haru stopped suddenly, letting Rin walk ahead of him. The red haired boy turned again and wanted to ask him what was wrong, but his expression said it all.  
Haru's eyes were glittering, the blue of his pupils turning into a moving force, a flowing image, the wondrous mass of water being reflected in them. Haru's eyes seemed to have combined the softness of the sky and the overwhelming presence of the ocean, the blue in them dancing and glittering at the same time.  
Haru was fascinated; he was completely engulfed by the grandiose image of something he had been admiring for so long, that he wasn't sure he could articulate any words in that moment. The small lake he and his friends used to swim in was nothing in comparison to the sight he was facing in that moment, and the stories they heard about it couldn't even begin to describe the feeling he felt.

Rin's worried expression turned into a smile when he saw Haru's sparkling eyes and he jumped between Haru and Makoto who had just caught up, putting his arms around their shoulders and shifting his weight on them, saying: "It's better than I expected. Right?"

"Where...do all these waves come from?" he said as he approached the sea, taking his shoes off, walking slowly on the warm sand and curling the fingers of his feet to feel the softenss of the sand and have it memorized He stopped as he felt the waves smoothly sweeping his feet, looking down at the way they retreated and then looking up in the blue distance.

"Where do you think it ends?" he asked the two who had come closer behind him.

"I bet this isn't even a small part of it!" Rin answered, throwing his arms in the air trying to explain the vastness.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Makoto added looking at the way the water glittered when the sun laid its rays on its surface. With the corner of his eye, he noticed Haru moving and when he turned toward him, he had already taken his shirt off and was throwing it in Makoto's hands. Before he managed to catch it, Haru was done taking his shorts off as well.

"Haru, what are you doing?" Makoto wailed.

"I'm going to swim", he answered as if it were the most obvious thing to do and Makoto's attention turned to Rin when he heard him speak.

"You should strip that off too, you won't be able to wear it afterwards." Rin said and started to take off his clothes off as well. Haruka nodded and took the suggestion, and Makoto was left confused and agitated on the side as the two advanced into the water, and he heard Rin call him.

"It's a bit cold, but it feels good!"   
"Just leave the clothes there" Haru emphasized RIn's call.

Makoto was nervous about breaking the rules, but at the same time he was excited and he was actually tingling to get his legs into the ocean and find out how it feels, find out something maybe no one in his village knew. He was curious, just like the other two boys were when they'd decided to make a one day waling trip just to get to see it. When they'd departed, they hadn't known how far they were going to go as the ocean was only known though some fairy tales and they had never seen it, so it was very surprising for them to find it so quickly.

Makoto reluctantly took his clothes off, put all of them between their bags so the mild wind wouldn't pick any of them up and he heard a "hurry up" when he turned, he saw Rin splashing water around, on Haru, and then on him when he dragged his feet through the water, feeling its resistance as he walked closer to his friends who were in up to their hips. The feeling of the waves dragging him along as they retreated was something unknown and he walked slowly, observing each new feeling he got in comparison to the lake they had in their own village; the lake was not exactly small, but they had gotten used to it after swimming day after day from one end to another, that the difference seemed even bigger.

The sun was burning on the sky, warming the water that was still stubbornly cold, and heating the sand that was already too hot to step on.

The three played around in shallow water, splashed each other, chased each other while walking slowly through the water and then they swam back and forth, keeping their promise not to go in too far; although anyone would wish to know what's beyond that enormous mass of water, they knew it might be dangerous didn't dare to explore it too far yet.

They played until the skin of their feet and hands wrinkled, racing to the shore and ending up in a draw because of the waves that kept pushing them forward and ruining their forms.

They had a lot of fun, laughed all day and maybe it was the day when they saw Haru smile the most. They felt as if it passed in an instant but as if it would never end.  
They had decided to get out of the water for a break and Rin was just reaching the shore when he looked back and saw Makoto.

"Hey, Makoto...where's Haru?"

They looked back over the ocean's surface, they looked on the shore, the y looked everyehere but couldn't see any trace of Haru. no trace of him surfacing and no trace of him having gotten out already.

Rin and Makoto could only remember in a haze what had happened afterwards. They had been frantic in looking for Haru, dove and checked all over, desperate and scared. They'd never heard him ask for help, they hand't even noticed him disappear; it all happened in an instant: from the moment they'd decided to take a break until they reached the shore, while they crossed the short distance from the place where water reached up to their chests, Haru had disappeared. Not like he'd drowned, but as if he'd simply vanished. And it stayed that way after villagers also came and helped in the search when the two had went back without stopping to catch their breath.   
Haru was nowhere to be found, not even a trace of his existance, not even his body alone.

There was a sort of legend passed verbally from generation to generation, and it talked about the ocean, the vast beautiful ocean and people being spirited away. And there was an ancient mysterious story of a village girl who tried to elope with her boyfriend. She was waiting by the sea in the night they were supposed to run away, and in a moment of carelessness, trying to pass some time until her lover arrived, she fell into the water after slipping on the rocks going meters in it, and died before she got to even see him arrive. It is said that the ocean took pity of the miserabe girl who cried worried that her lover never intended to come from the start, and it had turned her into a mermaid. The legend said that the ocean water tried to find a replacement for her years after her death and would swallow young people who approached it, never letting them come back.

No one had ever believed the legend and all the childern thought about the ocean in admiration and hope; they wished to get a glimpse of it, but were never allowed to do so by the adults who still believed in the story and claimed it had reccured a number of times.

And so, Haru who was like water himself, turne d into water and left Makoto and Rin alone to grow up, and left them with aching hearts as they frequently visited the place where they parted and stared in the blue distance as if hoping they'd see Haru show up as if nothing had happened, still in his child appearance, with the same clear blue eyes.  
But days passed, and passed, and passed, and Makoto and Rin grew up, passing his height, their bodies growing bigger than he was, than they were, leaving Haru in the same image as the last time they'd met.

The three of them had always been together; they were stuck like glue and did everything together, so the two remaining couldn't ever get over the happening.

"The sky's so clear today..." Rin said looking up with a hand blocking the sun from his eyes.

"Maybe Haru's telling us he's doing fine where he is, too..." Makoto said in response with a bitter smile, looking instead over the horizon, at the ocean, and not at the sky.

It had been 6 years since the tragedy, a small fragment of the tragedy of the world, and Makoto and Rin were walking on the beach with their slippers in their hands, in one of their numerous trips there. They were feeling calm, though sadness still crawled into their hearts whenever they went there, and they walked feeling the light breeze brushing their cheeks.

In the same way as before, it happened out of the blue. Rin startled and stopped in his track, staring far ahead. 

"Hey Makoto...what's that?" he was still the first one to say something, and spoke in a slightly trembling voice, grabbing Makoto's arm.

Makoto first looked at Rin, then turned his attention to the direction he was looking into, and they both saw a figure. Something that looked like a human, but also like a fish. The figure was faint and too far away to discern anything, but the image seemed to perfectly fit the description of a mermaid.

Rin tugged Makoto's arm making him lose balance for a moment, and a hurt expression turned into a hopeful smile and in that instant, Makoto felt Rin let go and saw him run. He dashed to the place where he saw the figure, without looking back and just calling for Makoto to follow.

"Rin, be more careful! Rin!" 

Rin couln't hear anymore, or pretended he couldn't and he sprinted ahead, kicking the sand in his steps and then running on the rocks with no care and no attention, only stopping to lean over the water and shout:

"Haru! HARU!!"

Makoto couldn't react, just stood behind Rin looking at the way he shouted and at the way the water got calmer again. He wouldn't have dared to call Haru's name and acknowldge he'd also hoped this unusual occurence to turn into the scene of their reunion, but Rin's boldness made his hesitation fade, and he felt an impulse pushing him to shout out at well.

"Haru! Haru, please come back!" he shouted, and both of them stilled. The excitement turned into silence, slowly turning into disappointment. They wondered what they were expecting, if any normal person would have jumped like that at a mirage on a scorching summer day, and Makoto looked at Rin who couldn't seem to be able to raise his head, and sat crouching with it hanging. He wanted to tell him something, but couldn't find the right words, and his attention switched from the disheartened figure of Rin to the water, where he saw ripples that increased in intensity. He could only stand and stare as a human figure emerged from the water and stared at them with eyes bluer than the ocean.

Rin also lifted his head at the sound, and the three of them looked at each other. The boy in the water, a male their age with dark hair and blue eyes, looked confused as the two of them broke into tears and murmured the name "Haru"; Makoto tried to contain his tears, but Rin's unrrestrained cries and sobs seemed contagious, and the boy stared at them, without moving or intending to leave. Although he looked different from their unchanged image of him, he was undoubtedly Haru; he should be; he has to be.

"It's been a while, Haru" Rin finally said, leaning over the water even more. "Haru" didn't seem to understand and didn't seem to react either. Rin felt a weigh on his heart and gathered his courage to ask:  
"You're Haru...aren't you?"

The two friends were nervous; they knew there was a possibility of him being someone else, and they'd lived with the feeling of Haru being gone forever more than enough, and losing him again would definitely crush them; but they couldn't help but hope, and they waited nervously for an answer, almost worried that the boy in front of them couldn't even understand speech.  
After a pause that felt infinite, he spoke his answer that seemed like a whisper against the ocean murmur.

"I am...I'm Haru" he answered, still looking confused.

The two's hearts felt a sudden relief and they were surprised when Haru dove and behind him hit the water an enormous fish tail; they hadn't seen things, it was real and Haru was...a mermaid? He resurfaced closer this time, so close that Rin could reach out and touch him.

"I felt that I had to go back" he said with an expression that seemed to expect some kind of explanation from them.

They found out more about Haru's life after they'd parted. He didn't have any memories from before he was twelve, when he dissapeared from their side. He could remember their language but couldn't remember much about human customs, and he'd started his life again. Only that feeling was the one that never left him: that someone is waiting for him, and that he had to go back, so Makoto's plea from some minutes before made him realize the time had come.

When they'd wanted to leave on that day 6 years ago, Haru had dived to reach the shore underwater. But what he found there was a deep , deep ocean that seemed to be pitless. The blue was turning to black, and he couldn't see anything around him aside from water. He swam and swam until he had no energy left, with a feeling that he had to return somewhere, but he tired out before he found something, anything. The only thing he could see was the water and the fish, and the more and faster he swam, the more his memories were fading away, being reduced to nothing; his precious friends who he'd loved so much from childhood were now just faceless shadows of the past he couldn't remember. They did feel a sting of sadness when he asked them for their names, but their hearts became lighter when they saw his reaction and words that seemed to be an instinctive guess.

"Makoto, Rin...   
...my best friends" Haru said showing a warm affectionate smile, looking at the water and then at the two. 

"Haru, did you live underwater until now?" Rin asked curiously.

"I lived in all kinds of places", Haru answered bluntly and reached both his hands out. Rin and Makoto understood what he wanted and they held his hands, dragging him out of the water, and Haru also used his tail to help them lift him.  
When he sat beside them, as if some magic happened -if Haru's turning into a fish wasn't magic enough- his tail turned into legs, exposing his skin, whole body naked, and Haru wobbled, trying to get up, the two hurrying to help him up.

"It's been a while since I last used these..." he explained and grabbed into both of them.

Rin and Makoto couldn't hold back from showing their joy, hugging Haru tight and smiling, showering him with love and telling him "welcome back" again and again.  
It was true that he couldn't even remember them and that the future wasn't sure yet, but Haru was back, and they wouldn't let him leave again; not now and not ever. He was back, he wished to be back, and who knows, maybe just like he disapeared suddenly and appeared again suddenly, maybe his memories would gradually come back as well, and he would turn back into a human; because he was still their Haru, unchanged despite the years they'd lived apart. 

Haru wasn't entirely sure what was going on but he could feel the two's warmth and their happiness being transmitted through the crushing hug. He closed his eyes and cluched onto their clothes, answering softly.

"I'm home."

**Author's Note:**

> I feel as if any fanfic I make doesn't have any content actually, and I'm wondering if they're enjoyable or not, skipping the detail that my writing may not be the most attractive.   
> I think I need someone who can actually write fanfics and maybe my ideas will look a lot better.
> 
> I'd only planned to do the 'ocean' part and Haru turning into a mermaid but I think it also went into the direction of 'soorrow'.


End file.
